


Adventures In Solitude

by Echo7



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: And some morbidly gross ones, Angst, But mostly the sad ones, Death, F/F, Feels, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Like all the feels, Songfic, Survivor Guilt, just a lot of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-11 15:16:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13526982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echo7/pseuds/Echo7
Summary: When you were a child you thought that warriors were brave. They fought giants and dragons and black knights. They came back from their battles because they were worthy. You know better now. Warriors are fools. Survival is luck. And not always the good kind.They call you a survivor. And if that makes you lucky then you’d hate to see what unlucky looks like.An introspective look through Patsy's time in Hong Kong and her arrival back home in Poplar.





	1. December 1962, Poplar

**Author's Note:**

> I've had Patsy and her father on the brain a lot lately due to my other fic. But since it's canon divergent, Patsy would never go to Hong Kong even if I did continue the events into 1962, which I will not (God, I hope not). Still, the thought of her returning there has been in my head a lot lately, so I had to get it out before I could continue _There but for the grace of God._
> 
> But don't worry, this one is all written, and will be released twice weekly while I get back to work on GoG.
> 
> The final push to get this one out came from listening to one of my favorite New Pornographers songs, "Adventures in Solitude" (https://youtu.be/tkXTCvchwg8)  
> So each chapter is loosely inspired by a verse from the song. (see the italicized lyrics in the headers)

_Balancing on one wounded wing_  
_Circling the edge of the neverending  
The best of the vanished marvels have gathered inside your door_

——-

 

_December 1962, Poplar_

 

She is standing right there in your room. Right in that same spring coat she was wearing when you last laid eyes on her. Last held her in your arms and heard her whisper, _“I love you”_ into your ear.

But it is winter now, and that lightweight green coat does not herald a thaw.

You are angry. And hurt. The silence, all that silence, had seemed to say more than a letter ever could. It had said she wasn’t coming back. It had said you’d lost her. But here she is, standing in your room. Patience Mount in all her glory.

But no, not her glory. Looking at her now in the clear light of your bedroom you see that there is nothing glorious about her, aside from her presence (that, despite your anger, you can at least admit is glorious).

She looks so diminished. So wounded. Her unevenly cuffed jeans and scuffed plimsolls a clear signifier that something is terribly amiss. The Patsy that had left you nine months ago had been crisply pressed and polished. The Patsy that had left you nine months ago would have never been seen in public with her clothes in such disarray. The Patsy that had left you nine months ago didn’t even own a pair of plimsolls, despite the numerous times she commented on how comfortable they appeared. Because that Patsy had a facade to maintain. Never slouching, never flinching, never a hair out of place.

Preservation. That’s what you knew it was. The appearance of having oneself together did wonders on effecting that actual outcome. If the container was sound, the despair and panic, the worry and fear, even the love that must be hidden at all costs, could not leak out and make itself known. But it appears the container has cracked, and not a small imperfection that allows these things to ooze out slowly until a once full bottle is suddenly, surprisingly, empty. No, this container has split apart completely. You hadn’t recognized it in the dark corner of the street, but looking back, it was there in how she wouldn’t meet your eyes at first. There in how when she did, they were full of pleading. There in how earnest her voice sounded as she told you she always knew she’d come back. There in the trembling of her lip as she realized how close she had come to pushing you away. There in that desperate kiss that pulled you back in.

But here in your room, the cracks show themselves for what they truly mean.

Patsy is broken.

And suddenly you feel the enormity of your self-absorption.

When she had told you she was leaving you had called her decision brave. You had called it caring. You knew even then, as you watched her shaking hands fumble with her cigarette case, that you were also referring to yourself. Letting her go was brave, was caring, was the decision to be proud of.

And when she had asked how you both would survive the distance and time apart, you had been so wrapped up in your own pain that you hadn’t really understood what she was truly asking. Not then. You had thought she meant that she’d miss you. That the pain of absence would be unbearable. And of course, she did mean that. But as you look at her now, you realize that there had been more to her words, and you feel the shame of your short-sighted selfishness. Because Patsy had asked you how she would _survive_ , and you thought nothing of what that word truly means to her.

Patsy knows more than most the true meaning of that word. And there she was, facing the return to the part of the world that had taught her that horrible lesson in the cruelest way possible. The return to a home full of ghosts and pain that you can scarcely imagine. So when she had asked about survival, that’s what she truly meant. She wanted to know how she could live through watching another family member die a slow, horrible death without you by her side. She had been afraid.

She is _still_ afraid. The revelation hits you like a wave as you watch her hover by the door, her fingers fidgeting and eyes darting around to focus on anything.

Anything but you.

Anything but you and your pain.

Of course, she’s afraid. You’re all she has left, and you welcomed her home with doubt and disappointment. Patsy’s standing there in her scruffy clothes, her face paler than you’ve ever seen it, and she’s terrified of losing you. And you can tell the very prospect is threatening to shatter your broken lover into a million pieces.

So you do the only thing you can. In three quick strides you’re across the room and she’s in your arms. You squeeze her tightly, trying desperately to mold those broken pieces back together with sheer force. Your heart seems to stutter in your chest as you realize how much farther your short arms wrap around her than when she left, how unfamiliar her body feels, how thin, how fragile.

She begins to shake with sobs as she clings to you.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes. “I’m so sorry.”

You’re sorry too. More than you’ve ever been in your life.

 


	2. April 1962, Hong Kong

_More than begin, but less than forget_  
_Both spirits born from the not happened yet  
Gathering there to pay off a debt brought back from the wars_

——-

 

_April 1962, Hong Kong_

 

Your stomach is churning as the ship docks in Victoria Harbour. Although you know it’s not seasickness, you’re more than happy to pass it off as such. But you’ve felt it seething away in your gut since long before you left Southampton, long before you even left Poplar, and as you disembark in Hong Kong the steady land does nothing to quell it. In fact, it just builds and builds with each step down the pier.

Dread.

You haven’t felt it this strongly since Sister Winifred threw her shaking arms around you in relief, your red scarf that she couldn’t possibly have suddenly flying into your face and choking you with the mingled smells of diesel and Delia’s perfume. And before that, years before that, when the red spots on Libby’s chest and her plucking hands and raging fever had told you that it was only a matter of days until she joined your mother in her own ill-fitting coffin outside the bamboo-plaited gedék fencing of the camp.

Because, as you told Sister Monica Joan more than a month ago, losing someone is not something you are good at. An understatement if there ever was one. But _anticipating_ that loss. _Dreading_ it. _Hiding_ from it. _All that_ , you are very good at. You learned that skill at the tender age of eleven and have been perfecting it ever since.

You did it with Delia after her accident. As soon as her mother had told you that she was taking your beautiful, broken girl away from you and back to Wales, you just... left, taking Delia’s flowers with you without so much as a goodbye to the woman you loved. Then you left that spotless flat and the flowers too, a little gift for the next set of tenants, a wilting shrine to the love you had dared let yourself think you could possibly deserve. You hid from your loss behind that unshakable facade you had so carefully built over the more than fifteen years since you first learned the reason for dread. Never writing. Never trying to get in touch. Never once letting yourself imagine that this loss might not be permanent. You locked her away with your dead family inside that cardboard safe under your bed. It was so much easier to keep your heart in that flimsy box than in your own fragile chest.

After all, you had experience. Delia wasn’t the first living person you had locked away. He was in there too. His gaunt body and sunken cheeks covered in tears for the two people you had buried over a year prior. His grief making you feel the guilt of not being able to save them. Of continuing to live when they had not. Of continuing to live even though your heart had tried to stop.

So you had hidden from him as well. Equal parts angry and relieved when he sent you across the world. In England you hadn’t had to face it. In England, Mother and Libby’s absence felt less real, like they were just with Father in Singapore while you were in boarding school abroad. And they were, weren’t they? In every way that truly mattered. That’s why you had shut him out. And he you. Their absence made so much more vivid by each other’s presence.

So you came to a silent understanding. A cowards’ bargain. And it suited you both perfectly.

You always were too similar, resembling him more than Mother even though you shared her big blue eyes and curving hips. And as the years passed the resemblance only grew, despite (or perhaps because of) the distance. Maybe that’s why you had dyed your hair, wanting to look even more like her, _be_ more like her, and not your cold, blonde father. You already shared too much with him, anyway. Could feel him staring back at you from the mirror no matter how much you tried to pretty yourself up. Your eyes might be your mother’s but the look in them was his. Always his.

Perhaps that’s why you both survived. There must be something in your shared natures that refused to give in. Not bravery. You know that. No matter how much Delia has tried to tell you otherwise, you aren’t brave, and neither is he. You are both stubborn, certainly, but it’s something more. Maybe it was your cold detachment that had allowed you both to survive the sweltering heat of Sumatra. Because the odds had certainly not been in your favour. Hundreds died in your camp alone - from banka fever and beriberi, septicemia and dysentery - and Father’s camp hadn’t fared much better. But somehow, you both made it through the starvation, torture, and disease.

And neither of you could ever forgive yourself.

That’s why he asked for you.

That’s why you’re here.

For them.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Banka fever_ \- an illness common in Japanese internment camps on Sumatra and Banka Island. Exact nature is unknown due to lack of proper diagnostic tools, but is thought to have been a type of cerebral malaria. 
> 
> _Beriberi_ \- a disorder caused by lack of thiamine/vitamin B1 which if untreated causes extreme swelling of the limbs to the point where they are too heavy to lift or bend. It can eventually lead to heart failure.


	3. December 1962, Poplar

_We thought we lost you_  
_We thought we lost you_  
_We thought we lost you  
__Welcome back_  

——-

  


_December 1962, Poplar_

 

You have fantasized about this moment for months now. Imagined scores of scenarios. Tearful reunions and passionate embraces. Her scent, her touch, her taste. Always joyful, always a relief. But over the last few months you had stopped these happy imaginings. You had stopped letting yourself believe she would really come back. Still, in those slippery moments in the morning between sleep and wake, you couldn’t help yourself. You couldn’t control those subconscious thoughts.

No, over the past months, when you allowed yourself to think of her at all, to consciously imagine her return, you had raged at her. How could she leave you with no word? She, of all people, knows how that feels. She waited for months for you. She waited even though she couldn’t know you remembered her. No word. And you know how that hurt her. You know how abandoned and alone she felt. You know because you felt that same pain. That same abandonment. Your mother gave it to you both in equal measure.

But this time, there was no one stopping your post. No one else to break the thread. Just you. Just her.

And she broke it.

And you weren’t sure you could forgive that. Weren’t sure that you could pick up all those broken pieces. Not this time. Not with how utterly alone and desperate you have felt. Not with how you’ve had to watch Barbara prepare for something you could never have, pasting on a smile when all you want to do is crumble under your loneliness and grief. Not with how frayed and ragged your brave face has become without that thread to hold it together.

But in all your imaginings, you had never pictured this. Never pictured Patsy broken. Never pictured her so small, so thin. You could never have imagined feeling her ribs even through two layers of clothing. Imagined hesitating to rub her back because her vertebrae scrapped your palms. She feels like she might break apart in your arms, her long bones rattling loose and collapsing into a pile from her shaking sobs.

You thought you would lose her to distance. Lose her physically. That she would never come back.

This is not how you imagined losing her. Her body wasting away like it must have in those horrible camps. Your strong curvy lover all straight lines and delicate angles. No, you had never imagined her losing herself. Not Patience Mount. Not the brave woman who survived disease, starvation, and death as a child. Not the imposing nurse who commanded respect from even the most crass patients on male surgical. Not the steadfast lover who stood up to your mother when you couldn’t even ask for your own birth certificate. Not _your_ Pats. But she has. This is not the Pats that left you last spring. Your Pats has not returned from Hong Kong. Not yet.

Tears of white-hot shame begin to fall down your face as you think about what she must have gone through. The shame burns you, leaving blistering marks across your face that you hope leave scars, and you relish the searing pain. Because you deserve it. You have made her grief and her loss about you. These last few months you cursed her for failing to write. For failing to support _you_. To reassure _you_. For making _you_ feel like a ghost.

But you don’t know real ghosts.

Patsy does.

While you worried about losing someone who knows who you are, she was facing the loss of her entire family. The crushing guilt of survival. Tangible ghosts and immovable spectres that will haunt her for the rest of her life. She trusted you to preserve your shared present while she fought the horrors of her past and braved her unknown future as the last remaining Mount.

How lost she must have felt, walking the empty rooms of her father’s house. Watching him slowly die. How had you not seen it? Her early letters had been too bright, and you let yourself be blinded by the blazing sunshine and thick humidity of Hong Kong. They were full of questions - about your studies, about your shared friends, about how you were coping. She told you she loved you. She told you she missed you. It was all you. Never her. You had lost her even then, you just didn’t see it yet.

But somehow, she has returned to you. Somehow despite it all, she has dragged her sack of sharp bones across the oceans and into your arms. Laid them at your feet. To mend or to break.

You pull her closer to you, carefully, gently. With her head against your chest you make a silent promise to help her come back. To pick up those broken pieces even if it cuts your hands to shreds.

“It’s alright sweetheart. We’re alright. Welcome home.”

 

 

 


	4. May 1962, Hong Kong

_Sleeping for years, pick through what is left_   
_Through the pieces that fell and rose from the depth  
From the rainwater well, deep as a secret nobody knows_

——-

  
  
  
_May 1962, Hong Kong_

 

Time, in all its vagary, is split between caring for your father and rattling around in this empty old house. The former, you wish you could call nursing, but it’s not. For one, you don’t have your uniform, and you finally understand why Chummy had been so vehement about keeping hers on when she saw her own parent from this world. _It’s your armour, old bean._ But you’ve known that for years.

Or have you?

Perhaps not.

Perhaps a better analogy would have been a shield. Before, at the London and in Poplar, your uniform had been your shield. Something you could direct. Something you could hide behind.

But now you realize what armour is really for. It’s for protecting your vital organs from blows from all sides. Protecting your heart from the hits you never see coming. Your heart that somehow stowed away in your chest even though you could have sworn you left it in that old shoebox where it belonged.

You could really use that protection now as you wander through your father’s quiet house. His home. Not yours.

You think back to a lifetime ago with Delia’s head on your chest, her hand resting cautiously on your stomach as if she knew you might vanish at any moment, asking about the letter from your father. You had told her you’d known what it would say, _“Come home.”_ Why had you used that word?

 _Home_.

This has never been your home. Your home was that old black and white bungalow in Singapore, and after that, a twenty inch wide stretch of a shared sleeping platform in the barracks camp in Palembang. Your home has been a dorm room in boarding school and spartan quarters at the nurses home. Your home has been Nonnatus, and for a brief, shining moment, a flat in the East End. But not here. Not in Hong Kong. Not without them.

Not that it matters. Even in their absence, they are everywhere.

Your mother is here in the grand piano in the conservatory that you know your father has never played. In the classic beauty of the decor that he never paid attention to before the war. In the bottle of her old perfume that sits on what would have been her dressing table in his bedroom. This last one surprises you, thinking of the bottle of your own absent love’s perfume that you carried with you over the oceans. An unexpected shared romantic sentiment to accompany your mutual burdens of grief and guilt.

And Libby is here too. The flowers in the garden are all for her, as are the delicate porcelain figurines collected from your father’s travels. Your sister had treasured those as much as you had the books he had always brought home for you. And that is another surprise.

The library.

Shelves upon shelves groaning under the strain of the stacked books crowding their surfaces. You expect the books on history and biography that had filled the library of your youth. But there is literature and poetry the likes of which you never would have anticipated. Novels by D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Poetry by Thomas, Owen, Eliot, and Auden. But most surprising are the shelves of the books he had brought you as a child. Replacement copies of _Alice in Wonderland_ , _The Secret Garden_ , _Winnie-the-Pooh,_  and dozens of others which had been left behind when you fled for the safety that you’ve still never quite found.

You are a ghost here too. A part of you has been wandering these rooms for years it seems, haunting your father right along with the spirits of your departed mother and sister. The knowledge is both a comfort and a near fatal blow to your unarmoured heart. The regret makes you sink to the floor right there in the library, the spines of hundreds of books blur as the unexpected emotion rocks you to your very foundations.

He missed you.

You.

Not just them.

Since you arrived you haven’t known how to act around your father. Despite your lack of uniform, you have been trying to act the part of nurse - hiding behind the flimsy shields of procedure and vocabulary.

But today you take a book from the shelf. One you are sure was purchased with you in mind. The spine is unbroken and pristine.

Waiting for you.

The adult you, not the child.

He is sitting up in bed when you enter his room. His nurse - his real nurse - must have helped him into that position from when you left him supine and sleeping hours ago. As you enter, he turns his head and smiles at you, his eyes brightening when he sees the novel cradled to your chest.

You pull the armchair close to his bedside and sit. The windows are open and a gentle breeze blows through the sheer curtains, clearing the smell of sickness from your nose at last. Allowing you to lay your makeshift shield down at your feet and finally be his daughter. As you sit, he reaches out an unsteady hand and you take it, using your other to thumb open the book to the first page. You meet his eyes and he nods, slow and unsteady, but clear.

Taking a deep breath, you begin, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

  



	5. December 1962, Poplar

_Less than forget, but more than begun_  
_These adventures in solitude never done  
__To the names of our wounds, we send the same blood back from the wars_  

——-

 

_December 1962, Poplar_

 

The morning light begins to creep through the lace curtains, bathing you both in its soft glow. She’s still here, more than a week later. Still in your arms in your twin bed, her sharp shoulder blades digging into your chest with each inhale of breath.

She’s stayed all night, every night. Never once casting a nervous look towards the door. Never once making a move to leave. Never once worrying about her roommate wondering where she was. (Not that Phyllis would, and for that you are eternally grateful)

You want to say that it makes you feel wanted. You want to say that it makes you feel loved. You want to believe that Patsy is ready to be a little less cautious, a little more open. But what it really makes you feel is worried.

She’s just so desperate. Just like that kiss in the street. It’s not romance, it’s not bravery, it’s a kamikaze mission. And although you relish every moment she’s with you, you worry. Because even though she clings to you, even though she pulls you so close that every inch of your bodies touch, even though she crawls inside you until you breathe as one, silently screaming your own name into your mouth, she’s still so alone. She’ll let you inside her body, but not her mind. Not her shattered heart.

So instead you watch.

You are a sentinel. A lookout in the crow’s nest searching the horizon desperately for land. You watch her chest rise and fall, her thin frame swimming in her flannel pyjamas. You watch the colour fail to dawn on her pale cheeks. You watch the purple half-moons waxing under her eyes. You watch the constant fog of smoke swirl around her as she lights cigarette after cigarette, and you try to pretend the flaming red hair and billowing smoke aren’t actually a pyre. Try to pretend you wouldn’t gladly burn on it with her if she’d only let you.

But she won’t. So you’re alone too. Alone and helpless, watching the woman you love burn. Watching as her bones become brittle and snap in the crackling flames. A bystander who is anything but innocent. A bystander who had greeted her under the railway bridge with a match when she had been searching for water.

You want to scream out. To warn her. To beg her to talk to you. To beg her not to burn. To come back to you in mind as well as in body.

You wish she would scream out. Scream your name. Scream for help. Tell you what to do. Let you in. But she’s not screaming, not even whispering.

So you stop breathing altogether. Not daring to move. Attentive to every sound.

You listen to the pages turn as she sinks deeper and deeper into the books she brought back, disappearing into fiction to escape her own mind. You listen to the music she sings to herself when she thinks no one is around, heartbreaking classical melodies that make you feel like her soul is being slowly pulled out of her mouth with each note.

And in the distance, you think you hear something. Faint and scratching, like mice chewing at her walls. So, you listen harder. And in the darkness of night, you hear them.

_Libby._

_Mother._

_Father._

She talks to them all in her sleep.

It’s not the screaming terrors you remember from the nurses home. The vivid nightmares of torture and death that woke her shaking and sweating, crying out for her dying family.

It’s so much worse than that.

It’s pleading and tearful. It’s begging for forgiveness. Forgiveness for abandoning them. For surviving. For coming back. For trying to be happy. For continuing to live even though she’s not good enough. Was never good enough. Should never have been the one to carry on.

_“It shouldn’t have been me. It shouldn’t have been me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”_

It’s endless. And it breaks your heart completely.

  
  
  
  


 


	6. July 1962, Hong Kong

_We thought we lost you_  
_We thought we lost you_  
_We thought we lost you_  
_It will all come back_

——-

 

_July 1962, Hong Kong_

  
You’ve fallen into a pattern. Each morning you sit and sip coffee on the balcony overlooking the garden filled with Libby’s flowers while your father’s nurse tries to get him to eat, a process that is getting more and more difficult by the day. The paralysis seems to be seeping through his veins - something you know is physiologically impossible, but the metaphor is fitting. It began as a twitch at his extremities and is progressing slowly towards his heart and lungs, just like the blood returning to be oxygenated by those same organs. Just like the blood that will make that journey in vain once the paralysis meets its target. But that is months away. Still, swallowing is becoming more and more challenging. Talking too. Not that that has ever been easy.

And that’s part of the pattern, as well. The not talking. When he is awake you sit and read to him, words upon words pouring out of your mouth but never the ones you need to say. Never the stories you need to tell. Never the questions you need to ask.

You long to tell him about your life. About the woman you’ve become. To tell him about how much you love your job. How bringing a baby into a loving home helps balance the number of nails you witnessed being driven into poorly constructed coffins. How helping others is like a shovel of dirt cast into the six-foot deep hole that was dug in your soul when you couldn’t help the only two people who mattered. How being a nurse is atonement and self-preservation all at once. How it makes you feel as happy as you ever hope to be.

But you swallow it down and focus on the words before your eyes. It’s easier that way, and you both have always been cowards.

Because you also need to talk about them. You need _him_ to talk about them. You need to know how your parents fell in love. How he felt when he first laid eyes on her. How he asked her to marry him. You need to know what it was like to hold Libby in his arms for the first time. To watch his daughters in the garden as he and Mother drank tea. To hear the story of your family before it gets lodged forever in his paralysed throat.

You just don’t know how to ask. You search for the words in the thousands of pages you read, but they never come. Perhaps on the next page. Or the next. Or the next. Your eyes strain and you have a never ending headache that only coffee seems to soothe, but still you read. Your voice filling the quiet room, but not the silence between you.

The next book you choose is another by Virginia Woolf. Something about her meandering prose seems to fit your scattered mind, and as you read, you feel like Bernard, always searching for the right words for your thoughts. You feel like Louis the outsider and the self-doubting Rhoda, but it is Percival who you truly are. Never speaking for yourself. Hiding behind the words of others.

But that is your choice. Because hiding is something you’ve always been good at. When you were a child it was a game played in the garden or in the empty rooms of your home. But once you turned nine it became survival. Don’t make eye contact as you bow. Blend in. Don’t draw attention.

You got even better at it at school. You were taller and older than most, so you could never hope to blend in. Instead you learned to hide in plain site. To seem friendly and funny without giving anything away. To never let anyone behind your walls. And you never did. Until a certain brunette squeezed past your barricades.

You must have stopped reading because your father clears his throat. You shake your head to clear away the thoughts of Delia and her sparkling blue eyes, searching the pages for your lost place, but he stops you.

“Patience,” he says. One word carrying so many meanings - your name and a command. And his eyes tell you that he is going to be the brave one. He is going to break the silence in this room you have filled day in and day out with your raspy voice.

“You’ve read enough today. Talk to me about London.”

So a new pattern begins. In the morning you drink your coffee in his room, distracting him from his choking throat by telling him of Poplar, of babies being born and cakes being hidden. In the afternoon you talk of Libby and Mother. He asks about the camps and you ask about the life before them. You both need to fill gaps, the things you missed. Both making unspoken promises to take those memories with you. He will take the pain to the grave and you the happiness back to England. Both knowing that those promises will be broken. Both knowing you will always carry the pain too, it sits too comfortably on your shoulders to put it down now.

But you will take the other stories too. You are their final keeper. The last minstrel. In your cardboard heart is the song of how they fell in love. How they danced on the deck of the ship that carried them to Shanghai with only the wind for music. How his chest ached with the beauty of Libby’s voice as it filled the conservatory of your home in Singapore. How he regrets the years he lost with you.

You carry it all now. And you begin to think you might need a larger box.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this story, Mr. Mount has limbic onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).  
> Patsy is reading _The Waves_ by Virginia Woolf


	7. September 1962, Hong Kong

_I know you want to work for, wait for, want more_  
_And that it’s coming at a bad time_  
_Some cold grace, pathless ways  
For all we know_

——-

 

_September 1962, Hong Kong_

 

It’s been just over five months, but it feels both like forever and no time at all. Time just isn’t linear anymore. Just like in the camps. But at least this time you have markers of its passage to ensure you that, despite your brain’s insistence to the contrary, it is indeed, marching on.

The first marker is your lifeline - the regular arrival of Delia’s letters reminding you that you have a future away from this purgatory, someone who will still be there when this year draws to a close. Because the other marker is the reminder that someone will not - the creeping progression of your father’s paralysis as it inches slowly towards his lungs and the suffocating death that awaits him.

But you don’t know how long either marker will last, because you’ve stopped writing back. And the crippling guilt of that only adds to the load you’ve carried since you were eleven, the additional weight making it more and more difficult to put one foot in front of the other. It’s not that you don’t want to write. It’s not even that you have nothing to say. Quite the opposite. You have too much to say. Too many words swirl around in your head, and the pen just sits so heavy in your hand and the longer you put it off the heavier it becomes.

You’re hiding again. Hiding from the reality of your situation. Hoping that if you don’t face the truth it will never happen.

And that is how the days pass. You sit in your denial and self-loathing, watching your father getting thinner and thinner as it becomes harder and harder to swallow. You drink coffee with his morning meal and smoke cigarettes for the rest, feeling like a traitor with each bite of food you take when he can’t. Watching as his body seems to shrink like wool in the wash, getting tighter and harder as he draws in upon himself. Watching as he becomes a paler version of the crying man from your shoebox heart, all skin hanging loosely over atrophied muscle and jutting bone.

So you smoke and you smoke. The nicotine and Delia’s letters the only tonics to your jangling nerves. Hoping that the latter won’t stop, even if you know they soon will. Your love is a saint, but even she has her limits. You know them well. You’ve paced their boundaries like you used to pace the gedék fence after your mother and sister died, taking note of all the breaches and insecurities, but never looking to go beyond them. Feeling safer within their walls than in the unknowns of the jungle beyond. But liberation day is approaching, ready or not.

The paralysis has set in in earnest now. Your father cannot move, can barely even talk. So you revert back to reading the words of others because you cannot be trusted with your own. Her name just seems to always be on the tip of your tongue, and you’re surprised that it hasn’t fallen off as you read him poetry. Her name always did sound like a poem to you. Or a song, perhaps. The abundance of vowels bringing a lilt even to your own clipped RP.

 _Delia_.

You can see the worry in his eyes as he watches you. You can feel him taking in your own pale skin and sunken cheeks. And when the letters finally stop, he sees you break.

You watch as he summons every ounce of energy to form the question, but you don’t help. You wait, knowing the guilt from his struggle will drag it from you at last, the name you fear to speak aloud.

“What’s happened?” he asks, those two words coming out so slowly it seems like hours.

But still you’re too afraid to grant a dying man his request. Too afraid to see the disappointment in his eyes. Knowing that you’ll see it in your own each time you look into the mirror. Your mother’s eyes with your father’s gaze.

“It’s nothing, Papa. I was just expecting a letter from a friend, but it seems she’s stopped writing.”

He studies you closely, and you can feel him seeing right through you.

You really are too similar.

“A friend?” he finally asks, his words strained and breathy. You can’t meet his eyes but you don’t need to.

He knows. He’s a secret romantic too, after all.

He could see it in how her letters made you lighter. See it in the way you’d sigh when you caught a whiff of her perfume on your wrist. See it in the way you blushed when Mrs. Dalloway talked of kissing Sally. Your father is a smart man, and his paralysis has done nothing to diminish that.

So, you meet his eyes. Trying to be as brave as the woman you love thinks you to be. “No, not just a friend.”

And he smiles at you. “Tell me.”

“Her name is Delia.”

 

 

 


	8. December 1962, Poplar

_I know you need to breathe through, come back, come to_  
_But it’s coming at a bad time_  
_Some lost heart, tangled days_  
_For all we know_

——-

 

_December 1962, Poplar_

 

You’re not being fair. You know you’re not. Not to yourself, and certainly not to Delia. You thought that it would be easier here. In Poplar. In her arms. But it’s not. And that’s your fault. Because a part of you won’t let it be.

But, how can you? How can you ever let yourself move on? To forget the sticky heat of Hong Kong and Sumatra. To forget the sickly yellow skin hanging loosely over bone like washing on the line. The glint of light fading from glassy unseeing eyes. The ragged sucking sound they all made as the air left their lungs forever. But a part of you burns to do just that. To deny that every breath from Delia’s body sounds exactly like their last. To look into her blue eyes and not see them vacant and staring. To run your hands over her soft skin and not feel it peeling away from her beriberi limbs.

A part of you longs to just run senselessly into her arms. Continue on as if these last nine months never happened. Go back to your old ways of coping. Your shield and your facades. Your emotions locked away in that old shoebox tucked into the dusty darkness under your bed.

But then a part of you just wants fall apart completely. To let all the emotions inside you rage and rampage until there's nothing left.

And that’s the real problem. The parts of you. There are just so many. The child. The daughter. The sister. The nurse. The lover. The partner. The stubborn survivor. You just don’t know how to reconcile them anymore. How they all fit together into one body, and until you do you’re afraid to move. Afraid to risk parts being jangled loose as you cycle over the cobbles leaving blood and sinew scattered all over Poplar, all over Delia’s bed, all over her hands.

But it’s too late. When you look at her you see that her hands are already bloody. It’s just not your blood, it’s hers. She grips her chest to stop it gushing from the hole you’ve torn there when you took her heart and put it in that flimsy shoebox beside your own. You didn’t need to take it. She would have given it willingly. But you’re selfish, squirreling away all your treasures to sustain you through the oncoming blizzard. Leaving her alone in the cold.

You just don’t know how to let her in. Not here. Not in Poplar. There’s a pattern here. A protocol. It’s too familiar, but also too foreign. Because you aren’t _her_ anymore. Nurse Mount. You left that shield in Hong Kong when you laid it by your father’s deathbed.

You can’t move forward with Delia, not here. She has the high ground. Or maybe you do.

You need to level it.

You need to start over. Tear it all down to its very foundations.

Just you and her.

Maybe then you can rebuild. Rebuild it all. Yourself. Your relationship. Your life.

You find her sitting in her room, staring blankly at the snow falling lightly outside the window. You call to her, and as she turns you see the hurt and desperation in her eyes. You can hear her mind whirring. _Maybe this is the moment. Maybe this is when it all breaks._ She looks so afraid. Afraid to lose you.

And finally, _finally_ , you talk. Just not about them. Or about him. You can't talk about that. Not yet. You can’t talk about the scent of death that hangs around you like a shroud. The perfume you carried back with you instead of hers.

But you can talk to her about something. You can open the door a crack, just enough for her to peak in and see how truly dark it is inside, to catch a whiff of decay. You can begin to let her in. You can tell her one thing you need.

You need to run away. Not _from_ her, but _with_ her. You need to go somewhere new. Somewhere far away from birth and death to that middle ground where life just might be. Where you can breathe air free of smog and decay. Where you can get that weight off your chest. The creeping paralysis that has choked your words in your throat. Where you can shift some of the burden from your shoulders and share it.

Stumble forward together.

Live.

 


	9. November 1962, Hong Kong

_I know you want to work for, wait for, want more_  
_And that it’s coming at a bad time_  
_Some cold grace, pathless ways_  
_For all we know_

——-

 

_November 1962, Hong Kong_

 

You’re surprised at how abrupt it all is. After months of watching him slowly die he just suddenly is.

Dead.

But you shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve seen death more times than you can count, but no matter how much warning you have, the transition from dying to dead is always so jarring. Because no matter how long one is dying they are still alive that entire time. Until they aren’t.

Dead or alive. Black or white. There really is no grey area. At least not for those left behind. Death is final. And you’re all that’s left.

The last survivor of the war.

When you were a child you thought that warriors were brave. They fought giants and dragons and black knights. They came back from their battles because they were worthy. You know better now. Warriors are fools. Survival is luck. And not always the good kind.

They call you a survivor. And if that makes you lucky then you’d hate to see what unlucky looks like. Because what those fables never tell you about returning from war is that you never come back alone. You carry all the fallen with you. Their corpses heavy and bloated. Their smell on your skin. You get used to it all in time, like walking through shifting sand, eventually finding your rhythm. But sometimes you stumble, and the smell of rotting flesh surrounds you as you are crushed beneath all that slippery weight.

And now you have more to carry. So much more than just another body. You have an inheritance, a legacy. You’re living for four now. Four lives focused into the only survivor left to live one. All their blood pumping through your veins making your heart ache and your limbs feel as heavy as if you had beriberi. And the weight of that brings you to your knees.

The house is even quieter somehow. Even with the constant stream of well-wishers, solicitors, and colleagues, all you hear is silence. Even as you work with his secretary to prepare his obituary for the _Times_. Even as you meet with the undertaker and make funeral arrangements.

All silence.

You had expected screaming. When your mother and sister died you couldn’t hear anything for months with the screaming in your head. You thought the walls of the barracks would crumble beneath the noise, the big bad wolf blowing the house down in a swirl of bamboo and palm fronds. But the silence is somehow louder than the screams had ever been.

You have to leave. You have to get back to the noise of London. Of wailing infants and bickering patients. Of music on the dancette and gossip in a smoky haze. Of a lilting Welsh voice and laughter that makes you feel alive. You need to run. Run from the silence. Run to the noise. Run to the only place left in this world you might still call home. Run to her.

You never want to come back here. Not even with Delia by your side. You know it will swallow you, or worse, her. So you take what you can carry and the rest you will put in a box. A real one. One that will travel over the oceans in your wake. There isn’t a large enough box in this world to carry all that you require, but you can make do. You pack some of the books with flowers from Libby’s garden pressed in the pages. You pack the monogrammed handkerchief he gave you to stem your tears as you told him of the love of your life. You pack your mother’s ring in a velvet box. And more, so much more. Reminders of four lives lived across the ocean. Reminders of three who never left.

The pen is still too heavy, and besides, what could you possibly say? The silence in your head is much too loud. So, just like you learned when you were eleven years old, you choose action over words, deeds over sentiment. The day after his funeral you board the first boat out of Victoria Harbour, hoping that it will bring you back in time.

But hope has never been something you’re good at, a lifebelt you’ve never quite managed to fasten properly. And now you’re carrying too much weight anyway. Now your limbs are too heavy for any buoy to support. And just like on the journey here, dread seems to rise in you like the tide, and you feel it all wash over you like a wave -  your regrets and your failures, your grief and your guilt - before the undertow of foreboding begins to sweep you out to sea and you know that you’ve lost her.

You know it is too late.

You know just how deafening silence can be.

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the last chapter in Hong Kong (obviously) and also with Patsy's pov. Next Tuesday we will close with Delia. Seriously, thank you all for your incredible words in the comments on this fic. It's meant a lot.


	10. February 1963, Okavango Delta

_I know you want to breathe through, come back, come to_  
_But it’s coming at a bad time_  
_Old scarred veins, survivor’s guilt_  
_For all we know_

——-

 

 _February 1963,_ _Okavango Delta_

 

You never expected to find yourself here. As a child you used to read stories of faraway lands. Of India, China, and Africa. Of lions and tigers, dragons and serpents. But you never dreamed you’d actually see them. The only dragons you’ve known are the ones of your homeland, the only tigers the one in the London Zoo, pacing its concrete confines in an endless loop. But in the past week you’ve seen lions, zebras, elephants, and giraffes. Antelopes, cheetahs, wildebeest, and crocodiles. And they look different here in the wild, all loose limbed and watching eyes. Just like Patsy.

In Poplar she had been like that tiger you remember seeing as a child. Circling and circling. Muscles tense. Restless and waiting for the cage doors to open. Ready to pounce.

You hadn’t been surprised when she had said she needed to run. But you’d be lying if you said you weren’t surprised she wanted you with her. Her desperate promise by the phone box had faded in her silence, swept away on all the smoke pouring from her mouth. She had pushed you away even as she tore at your skin with her nails. So, as she stood there in your room you expected the final blow. You expected her to rip you to shreds and leave you bleeding and tattered. But she didn’t. True to her word she wanted you with her. And you began to hope again.

Still, when she had said she needed to get away, this was not what you expected. You expected Paris or Rome. The Alps or the Mediterranean coast. Something comfortable and familiar. Not Africa. Not a safari.

But now you see her logic. She had said she needed space to breathe, and that’s here in spades. Miles and miles of open grassland with nothing but wildlife. Not a soul in sight aside from your guide. And it seems that somewhere amongst those tall grasses, she’s beginning to find herself. She’s even started to eat again, adding seswaa and bogobe to her diet of cigarettes and coffee. And you trace her newly emerging curves with hungry hands. A potter at your wheel, coaxing her wet clay back into the form you know by memory.

The heat is more than you could have imagined. Summer in February, you still can’t believe it. A summer more intense than any August in London ever could be, even with its heat radiating off the pavement, working itself into your nylons until they feel like they’ve fused to your skin. Your legs are bare here, and they’re covered in a slick blanket of sweat that never leaves you. But Patsy seems to be blooming in the steaming humidity. Her milky skin finally beginning to pink and freckle. The spots looking like bursts of laughter on her rosy cheeks. She seems so at home in this familiar heat, but the scenery is new enough that she can embrace the warmth without the terror. It’s grassland, not jungle. Open horizons, not bamboo fencing. A landlocked delta not a tropical island. The only death here is quick and purposeful. Predators and prey. Not senseless cruelty and innocents left to rot in the sun.

You spend your days in the endless horizons of the Okavango Delta. Watching the lechwe hop through the reedy water. Picking your way through the barren salt islands.

There’s a lone palm tree on one of them. The only sign of life amongst the white crystals that crunch underfoot, somehow surviving the harsh unforgiving salinity when nothing else can. Patsy stands and watches it for a long time. Watches as if waiting for it to give up the fight. To shrivel up like a snail. But it doesn’t. And you watch her, wondering what she is thinking.

You do a lot of wondering because she still is not doing much talking. Not letting you in. But you can wait. Can channel the virtue of your love’s name. Because the desperation has faded from her eyes. The pleading is gone from her hands. And at night you both feel your flesh burn, but it’s the flame of a phoenix not a pyre. There’s the promise of rebirth once you reduce each other to ashes.

As the weeks march on, you can tell she feels safer, a relative term if there ever was one, but still, it’s true. She begins to talk less to the ghosts in her nightmares and more to you. Tiny slivers of pain, laid out for you to pick through. To find the pieces that she needs to put her back together. It’s slow and tedious work, and you don’t know if you will ever finish this mosaic she has tasked you.

But you try.

Each day.

A shard here. A shard there.

Searching the piles together.

Watching the image emerge.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's where we leave them. I know this wasn't the most uplifting fic (although after the last episode it feels positively fluffy), but I have hope that they're off healing and repairing themselves and their relationship as they travel. 
> 
> I want to thank each and every one of you that went on this journey with me, and especially those of you that left comments and kudos along the way. They do help tremendously.
> 
> A very special thank you to my wonderful beta, So_Delialicious who I put through a hell of a week as I wrote this. Your support and feedback was amazing as always.


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